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Survey: Nearly 50% of EU companies worry about digital disruption

2018-09-27

Berlin, September 27, 2018 - Fears of digital disruption are growing in the European Union. Forty-seven percent of companies report that the signs of disruptive changes in their own industry have increased significantly over the past 18 months. Hardly any type of industry is spared from this development. Only 12 percent of companies feel little or no threat. This is demonstrated by a survey conducted by the software company Camunda.

Just how quickly entire industries can be disrupted by digital innovations has long been proven by Amazon, Netflix and numerous financial technology companies that are targeting banks with easy-to-use digital solutions. However, when it comes to disruption, many companies misjudge, believes Jakob Freund, CEO and co-founder of Camunda. ‘Amazon has already driven a wedge between customer and retail with the first book sold online,’ said Freund. ‘Falling sales are just the leverage effect of a disruption that started much earlier.’

The key to success for survival, therefore, is to develop early indicators in order to detect disruptive influences in one’s own business model with plenty of time. ‘If disruption can be deduced from the economic figures of a company, it’s too late,’ says Freund. The best protection against digital disruptors is to build in-house digital competences, the Camunda boss says: ‘Companies have to build a new self-image as a software company. In future, differentiation will only take place via the services offered. There will be software companies offering banking services and those building cars. But without in-house, high-performance software development capabilities, not a single company can do it.’

91% of EU companies have already realized that digital transformation is the key to long-term growth. Above all, this involves digitally rebuilding one’s own organization and developing IT systems that can be flexibly adapted to constantly changing customer requirements. Fifty-six percent of respondents rate microservices as a critical success factor for the IT infrastructure of the future. A particular challenge here is the consistent mapping of core business processes. This is also reflected in the activities of microservices pioneers, such as the US streaming service Netflix, which has released its own microservices orchestration solution. ‘Microservices enable novel applications that can be assembled and expanded like Lego kits. To ensure that overall business processes are not overlooked, it’s necessary to have end-to-end oversight through workflow automation technology, ‘says Jakob Freund.

Over the next 18 months, the Camunda chief expects a competition for the best customer experience to develop. ‘In the digital age, those who optimally serve their customers and can scale that ability will win,’ says Freund. ‘What matters is that more traditional products such as insurance are as easy to buy and use for the customer as buying a product on Amazon.’

About the survey

Camunda has interviewed more than 350 industry professionals worldwide to develop and deploy microservices-based software, including software architects (54 percent) and software engineers (17 percent), as well as business analysts, product managers and application developers. The survey was conducted by Researchscape International. The European Union, with more than 100 participants, accounted for around one third of responses. Firms in the finance, insurance and real estate sectors (28 percent) are the largest, followed by software (27 percent), telecommunications (8 percent), government (6 percent), internet (5 percent) and transport and warehousing (5 percent).

About CamundaCamunda is a software company reinventing workflow automation. Hundreds of companies including 24 Hour Fitness, AT&T, Lufthansa Technik and Zalando trust Camunda to automate core business processes to the highest possible extent, allowing their business to scale and revenue to grow without proportionally increasing operating costs.

With its open source-based workflow automation and decision platform, Camunda provides detailed visibility into business operations across distributed systems, boosts system resilience and enables enterprises to overcome “big workflow” challenges resulting from digital transformation. One of the fastest growing companies in EMEA as ranked by Deloitte, Camunda is based in Berlin with offices in San Francisco and Denver, USA. To learn more visit: https://camunda.com/